Alice in Borderland Season 1 Episode 4 Recap

[00:00:30] Yuzuha had caught a rabbit in the park. She petted it for a while before breaking its neck. She was going to use the rabbit for soup. Yuzuha was headed back to her hideout when she came across Arisu. He was lying on the street without any hope. She recognized Arisu from their previous game and asked him if he still wanted to live. Arisu responded that he was going to die too. Yuzuha left him on the street and went on her way. She cooked the rabbit and went to bed. The next day, Yuzuha went to a small bookstore. She got a book and went back to her hideout. It was raining that day, and she saw Arisu again on her way back. This time she wanted to help him.

[00:05:00] Yuzuha and her father were mountain climbing enthusiasts. They were on top of a mountain when she asked her father what she would wish from God. Her father wished God would make mountains for people to climb and enjoy. Yuzuha, on the other hand, wished for things to stay the same forever. Yuzuha was on her way home when a bunch of reporters rushed towards her. They wanted to ask her some questions about her father. Yuzuha entered their house and saw her father, preparing to leave. He was going mountain climbing. Her father explained that he wouldn’t lie about mountain climbing and that he didn’t know who wrote the article calling him a sham. Just like how her father accepted Yuzuha for who she was, he told her that the mountains accepted him for who he was.

[00:08:00] Yuzuha’s father left their house, never to return again. The article claimed that Yuzuha’s father was a sham. Her father made a solo climb on Mount Everest using an unknown path. He didn’t use any oxygen tanks, which made his climb impossible. The article written disproved her father’s climb, which led people to brutally judge him. Depression took over as her father committed suicide. His body was never found. Yuzuha spent countless days lying on her bedroom floor thinking about her father. She saw herself in Arisu, which was why she helped him. Arisu woke up at Yuzuha’s hideout. She saw that Arisu was awake, so she gave him a bowl of porridge and a glass of water. Arisu wanted to know why she saved him. Yuzuha explained that his body still wanted to survive. Arisu responded that only his body wanted to survive.

[00:12:00] Arisu blamed himself for the death of his friends. It was his belief that he no longer deserved to survive. He wanted to die in order to get back with his friends and apologize. He banged his head on the pavement as he mourned the loss of his friends. Yuzuha told Arisu that she had been there. She had also wanted to die, but she pushed onward. Yuzuha knew that she would eventually die. She might die in the next game, or she might die when her visa expired, but she wouldn’t die without trying. Yuzuha told Arisu to eat the food that she cooked as she worked hard on it for him. She smiled at him and continued eating. The next day, Yuzuha left the hideout for some exercise. She came back and saw that Arisu had eaten the food she had prepared for him.

[00:15:00] Yuzuha told Arisu to prepare for the next game. Arisu didn’t respond, so Yuzuha asked him a question. She wanted to know why Arisu had informed everyone about the tagger during their game. He told Yuzuha that he didn’t want everyone to die. Yuzuha responded that she didn’t want him to die. She wanted to return the favor because if Arisu hadn’t communicated the tagger’s location, she would’ve died. Arisu got up as he had found a new reason to live. Night fell on Tokyo; the billboards lit up to inform players of the location of the next games. Yuzuha and Arisu entered a tunnel to join their next game. They walked inside the tunnel and found a bus. There were three other people on the bus. Arisu and Yuzuha took a phone and registered themselves for the game.

[00:19:00] One of the men inside the bus realized that they knew what they were doing. The three men had cleared four games as a group; however, one of them had been injured during a game. After their talk, the game commenced. The game was named “Distance,” it belonged to the club genre with a difficulty rating of 4. The rule was to endure the trial and reach the goal safely. They were given 2 hours to clear the game. A distance counter showed under the timer on their phones. One of the men inside the bus asked if they were supposed to run. It was obvious, and the injured man grew worried. One of the men tried to start the bus, but it didn’t have any gas. Yuzuha told them that they didn’t have any choice but to run.

[00:21:30] The injured man was Takuma. He wanted to sacrifice himself so that they could survive. He couldn’t run because of his injury, which meant he was a burden to the team. The two other men were Yamane and Seizan. Yamane argued with Takuma, but he had already bid them goodbye. Takuma told them that he enjoyed the time he spent with them. Seizan convinced Yamane to leave the bus. Yuzuha told Arisu that leaving Takuma was the right thing to do. The group prepared for their run. Yuzuha lead the way as Arisu remembered Chota and Karube. They sacrificed themselves for him, so he couldn’t let the game beat him. He ran and followed Yuzuha. At the 5km mark, they found a replenishment station. The table was full of water bottles. Seizan was about to drink from a bottle, but Yamane stopped him.

[00:25:30] They weren’t sure about the contents of the bottles, so they couldn’t risk drinking them. Arisu was about to drink from one of the bottles as well, but Yuzuha stopped him. She took out her own drinking bottle and gave it to Arisu. He took a gulp from the water bottle and thanked Yuzuha. Yamane and Seizan stared at Arisu and Yuzuha’s water bottle. Arisu noticed that they also wanted a drink, so he shared the water bottle with them. Yuzuha didn’t want to share, but it was too late as Seizan and Yamane drank from the bottle. They reached a dark area of the tunnel. Yuzuha saw that movement from afar. Arisu told her that there wasn’t any movement but a set of eyes illuminated from the darkness. It was a panther. Everyone ran as the panther gave chase.

[00:28:00] Seizan hid behind one of the cars as Yamane slid himself under another car. The panther couldn’t reach Yamane, so it gave up and pursued a new target. It climbed the car and found Arisu and Yuzuha. Arisu used a car door to stop the panther’s attack. Arisu entered the car to escape, but the panther used its head so that Arisu couldn’t close the door. Yuzuha climbed to the other side of the car to assist Arisu. She found a flare inside the car’s glove compartment and used it to scare the panther away. They met up with Yamane and ran away. Seizan was ahead of them, but the panther caught him. He stabbed the panther multiple times, but he couldn’t kill it. The panther dragged him away as he told Yamane to leave with Arisu and Yuzuha.

[00:30:00] Yamane wanted to give up. He had known Seizan and Takuma for only a week, but it felt like a lifetime to him. He felt alone, and he didn’t want to continue playing. Arisu came up to him and told him that he should continue and get back to his wife. He could tell his wife stories about Seizan and Takuma. Yamane agreed and pushed forward. As they continued running inside the tunnel, Arisu noticed a truck filled with collector motorcycles. He realized that the motorcycles didn’t have electronic circuits on them, and they also ran on diesel engines like the bus. Yamane and Arisu checked the motorcycle, but it didn’t have batteries on it. Arisu volunteered to push the motorcycle back to the bus in order to save Takuma. The plan was to transfer the gas from the motorcycles to the bus.

[00:33:00] Yamane and Yuzuha ran towards the end of the tunnel while Arisu pushed the bike back to the bus. Arisu passed Seizan’s body beside the dead panther. After 12 km, Yamane and Yuzuha reached the end of the tunnel. They sat and waited for Arisu to arrive with the Takuma. With fifteen minutes remaining, Arisu arrived at the bus and called out to Takuma. He realized something when he arrived at the bus. Back at the end of the tunnel, Yamane took out a photo of him and his wife. Yuzuha assured Yamane that their loved ones were safe somewhere, and they didn’t disappear into thin air. She told Yamane that they needed to survive in order to see their loved ones again. All of a sudden, bolts were coming flying loose from the steel wall behind them.

[00:37:00] After a few seconds, water started bursting out of the holes where the bolts came from. The wall eventually gave out to the immense water pressure. Yamane and Yuzuha ran for their lives as the water chased them. He was about to give up once again, but Yuzuha urged him to just keep running without looking back. Yamane stumbled and dropped the photo. He tried to grab it and get up, but it was too late. The water caught up with him and swallowed him alive. Yuzuha ran until she saw a bus. It was Takuma and Arisu. She managed to get on the bus before the water caught up with them. The water swallowed the bus, and everything went pitch black.

[00:39:00] Yuzuha woke up beside Arisu and Takuma. They climbed out of the bus and noticed graffiti on it that stated “Goal.” The bus was the goal all along. The distance tracker read 0 inside the bus because it was the goal. The longer they traveled away from the bus, the higher the distance became. The trial of the game was to endure 2 hours inside the bus. Takuma decided to leave. Arisu asked him where he was going to go. Takuma didn’t have a clue where he was going, but he wanted to see them again if they were still alive. Arisu and Yuzuha agreed as Takuma limped away.

[00:43:00] Arisu told Yuzuha that they needed to go to “The Beach.” He wondered if all the other people who disappeared were there. He thought The beach was some sort of evacuation place. They rode a bike on their way to the beach. Yuzuha rode as a passenger because she didn’t know how to ride a bike despite her athleticism.